Apple Patent Details Siri’s Ability To Sort Through iOS Photos

Siri, the virtual private assistant that lives inside quite a few iOS devices, can do much more today as opposed to when it was originally launched. Over the years Apple has improved this service greatly, and a new patent filing reveals the possibility that the company might be considering making Siri capable of sorting through photos stored on an iOS device. Titled “Voice-Based Image Tagging and Searching,” the patent describes a method in which “natural language” text strings are attached with photos saved on a mobile device.

The strings can cover an activity, location or an entity, thus making it easier for users to sort and search photos on their devices, this would be particularly useful for those who tend to take a lot of photos. For example, if a photo is tagged with a string which goes like “This is me at the beach,” simply including this string in a relevant voice command given to Siri would bring up all photos tagged with it. An example mentioned in the patent describes that simply asking the device to “Show me photos of me at the beach,” would let Siri to bring up related items. Apple filed this patent earlier in the year, in March to be precise. So far this feature has not made it to iOS, and there’s no way to be certain when it ultimately will.